GDG- thenceforward, and forever free;

[Bob Huddleston]

 A TRAITOR CONGRESS AND A TRAITOR PRESIDENT.

	THAD. STEVENS, the leader of the administration party in Congress,
in a recent speech before that body, on the establishment of a new State
within the territory of Virginia, used the following language:

	"I say, then, that we may admit West Virginia as a new State, not by
virtue of
any provision of the Constitution, but under our absolute power which the
laws of war give us in the circumstances in which we are placed. I shall
vote for this bill upon that theory, and upon that alone; for I will not
stultify myself by supposing that we have any
warrant in the Constitution for this proceeding.
	This talk of restoring the Union as it was, under the Constitution
as it is, is one of the absurdities which I have heard reenacted until I
have become about sick of it. The Union can never be restored as it was.
There are many thing's which render such an event impossible. This Union
shall never, with my consent, be restored under the Constitution as it is,
with slavery to be protected by it."

	No one doubts that this is the sentiment and the programme of the
administration. We are told, "this Union shall never be restored under the
Constitution as it is." We have not for a long time doubted that such is the
determination of Mr. Lincoln and the whole
party in power. But had they announced their real designs in the beginning,
they could have never raised a respectable army for such a purpose.- Mr.
Lincoln had no right to call soldiers into the field for such an object. And
unless he backs squarely down from
this unconstitutional use of the army, where will he get another soldier?-
Will the States of New Jersey and New York permit any men to be drafted from
the militia, for an object which is a confessed violation of the
Constitution and the laws? The objects for which the
State militia may be called into the service of the Federal Government, are
expressly named and carefully limited by the Constitution. If the President
attempts to use the militia for unconstitutional purposes; it is clearly the
duty of the States to recall their troops from the field, and to refuse to
allow any further drafting, until the administration
returns to the Constitution and the laws. It is within the power of State
Executives and Legislatures to force a usurping President to abandon such
career of crime, by withholding and withdrawing the State troops. A Governor
who should allow the citizens of his State to be drafted, and dragged into
the army for the avowed purpose of destroying the Union as it was, and the
Constitution as it is, would be sure, in the end, to
receive the execration and curses of the people, and would finally fall into
the same hated page of history with the obscene joker, who thus abuses the
confidence and the patriotism of a loyal people. The duty of the Governors
is plain. They are to promptly respect all constitutional requirements of
the Federal administration. But they are not to obey an unlawful demand.
Suppose the President should issue an order for drafting the troops of New
Jersey, for the avowed purpose of abolishing the marriage laws in the State
of
Pennsylvania. Would such an order be obeyed by the State of New Jersey ?-
No, it would be resisted even to the point of the bayonet, if it came to
that. But we are told there is rebellion against the laws of the Union. Then
it is lawful to call out troops to enforce the laws of the Union; but it is
not lawful to [14] call them out to destroy the Union. But
we have satisfied ourselves that we can not enforce the laws of the Union.-
And so you have made up your minds to destroy the Union! Because you find
you are not strong enough to administer all the laws of the Constitution,
you have determined to destroy
that sacred instrument altogether!- Because some deluded men say-we wish no
longer to live within the temple of the Union, you have set yourselves to
work to pull the whole temple down, so that nobody shall ever live in it any
more! That is your position, O ye Catalines of Congress! Shall we send our
sons to fight to destroy the Union and the Constitution, because some have
proclaimed that they are tired of living under their protection? No, we will
not. There must be another kind of legislation in Congress-another kind of
proclamation from the hand of our law-defying and grammar-despising
President-before States which be truly loyal to the Government of our
fathers will send more troops into the field.- We have been told by the
apologists for Mr. Lincoln, that the radical, traitor Governors have coerced
the President to do wrong. Then let the conservative, loyal Governors coerce
him back again to do right. If the radical traitors would not suffer State
troops to move forward until the President came out with a series of
unconstitutional proclamations, let the conservative patriots withhold their
forces until those unconstitutional schemes are abandoned. If, as we have
been told, this wretched man, the President, has been forced to proclaim
against the Constitution, let him, by all means, be forced to re-proclaim in
its favor, if rascals have compelled him to do wrong, let honest men compel
him to do right. If the President is an honest man, he will rejoice to be
forced out of the clutches of the disunion radicals, If he does not agree
with the Chairman of his Committee of Ways and Means, when he says- "The
Union shall never, with my consent, be restored under the Constitution as it
is," let him come out by proclamation and say so, and we shall be among the
first to rush to his support, in every lawful endeavor to restore the Union
under the Constitution as it is.
	But, on the other hand, if he agrees with Mr. Stevens, that the
"Union shall
never be restored under the Constitution," let us look to see who will dare
to move any further to aid him in his work of treason and destruction. Let
us begin to prepare epitaphs of eternal shame for the tombs of the traitors
who dare lift up their hands, with Abraham Lincoln and his
fellow-conspirators, against the Union and the Constitution! The terrible
Danton once thundered into the French Assembly: "Room, there! Room in hell
for Maxamillian Robespierre! Read, O conspirators, your epitaph. [15]

TRIAL BY COMMISSIONS.

ARTICLE 3d, section 2, of the Constitution declares that-

"The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury;
But such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have
been Committed."

	It has been the boast of England for centuries, that the right of
trial by jury is the " bulwark of British liberty." It is a fundamental
article of Magna Charta that-

"No man shall be arrested, nor imprisoned, nor banished, nor deprived of
life, except by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land."

	This right of trial by jury cost the people of England a long and
bloody conflict with the despotism of the throne; but they triumphed at
last, and for centuries now, no occupant of the British throne has presumed
to deny to the humblest citizen, either in peace or war, the sacred right of
trial by a jury of men of his own degree. Our fathers
copied this great right of the Magna Charta into the Constitution of our
country, as the foundation of American liberty. They were careful that there
should never be any possibility of a misunderstanding of the law: "The trial
of all crimes shall be by jury."
	In his comments on this article of the Constitution, Chief Justice
Story says:

	"It is observable, that the trial of all crimes is not only to be by
jury, but to
be held in the State where they are committed. The object of this clause is,
to secure the party accused from being dragged to a trial in some distant
State, far away from his friends, and witnesses, and neighborhood, and thus
subjected to the verdict of mere
strangers, who may feel no common sympathy, or who may even cherish
animosities or prejudices against him.-There is little danger, indeed, that
Congress would ever exert their power in so oppressive and unjustifiable a
manner. But, upon a subject so vital to
the security of the citizen, it was fit to leave as little as possible to
mere discretion. By the common law, the trial of all crimes is required to
be in the county where they are committed."

	Now no honorable man will deny that the present administration has
recklessly and criminally trampled this most sacred portion of the
Constitution under foot. Not only have men been arrested without any process
known to the laws of the country, and denied the right of a trial by jury,
but they have been dragged beyond the limits of their own States, and
plunged into distant dungeons, where they have been savagely denied counsel,
and where their friends were never allowed to visit them. Here have they
been held, under the band of lawless despotism, for months, and that, too,
in cases where
no charges have been preferred against hem-where no charges could be
preferred against them-and where no reason could be given for their
incarceration, except private and political malice. Neither the dungeons of
the Inquisition in Spain, nor of the Bastile in France, in the bloody reign
of Robespierre, can furnish any instances of greater violations of law and
justice. In the Spanish and French reigns of terror there was, at least, a
pretended respect for the forms of law; but this besotted administration has
spit upon even the forms of all laws, whether of constitutional or statute
origin. It has totally ignored the right of trial by jury, and set the
constitutional tribunal[16] of the country one side, with as easy and as
reckless an impudence as Nero beat down the liberties of Rome, when he set
fire to its capitol, and danced by the light of its burning temples.
	In order more effectually to secure the great palladium of American
liberty, the trial by jury of all crimes, our fathers made certain additions
or amendments to the Constitution, which greatly added to the original
constitutional barriers against persecution and oppression.- The following
is one of these amendments:

	"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise
infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury,
except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia when
in actual service."

	It will be noticed that this article applies to all cases of crime,
except committed by those who are in "actual service" in the militia or navy
in time of war, where the civil courts cannot have convenient jurisdiction.
It applies to all cases except soldiers, or other persons within the lines
of the army in actual war.
	Chief Justice Story's comment on this amendment is as follows:

	"From this summary statement, it is obvious that the grand jury
perform most important public functions, and are a great security to the
citizens against vindictive prosecutions, either by the Government, or by
political partizens, or by private enemies. Nor is this all: the indictment
must charge the time, and place, and nature, and circumstances of the
offence with clearness and certainty, so that the party may have full notice
of the charge and, he able to make his defence with all reasonable knowledge
and ability."

	The same article of the amendment to the Constitution declares, that
every party "accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by
an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have
been committed."
	It is a well-known fact, that this provision of the Constitution has
been cruelly violated by the administration, by withholding from the victims
of its persecution "the right of a speedy and public trial by an impartial
jury" for it has criminally refused any form of trial for months, while the
accused were dying in prisons pleading to be tried, and
demanding in vain to know what were the charges against them, and who were
their accusers. And, whenever a trial did come, it was not by jury, but by a
"military commission" appointed by the President, and which conducted its
mockings of justice in secret without allowing the accused to be present, or
to call a single witness in his defence. My God! is this America ?- Are we
the sons of those brave defenders of liberty who fought the battles of the
Revolution, and gave us that grand palladium of freedom, the Constitution In
what part of the Constitution does the President find his authority for
appointing "commissioners" to try American freemen in secret? Is it that
clause which declares that "the trial of all crimes shall be by jury?" or is
it that other clause, which provides that every person accused "shall enjoy
the right of a speedy and public trial, by
a jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed?"
This is the supreme law of our land, which has never, until now been
violated.[17]
	The history of England furnishes some examples of trials by
"commissioners" instead of by jurors, as Magna Charta commands; but in that
country there has ever been found sufficient virtue in the courts, and
sufficient justice in Parliament, to affix the stamp of disgrace rid
condemnation upon such illegal deed: of tyranny.
	In the reign of Elizabeth, on an occasion of "great public danger,"
a order was issued, on the 4th of August, 1512, giving a commissioner
arbitrary powers over the rogues and vagabonds of London, which order was
shown to be illegal, in a great argument by Lord Bacon. He declared that all
such trials by commissioner "are not sufficient to call any man to answer by
any warrant by them made, without indictment or
other matter of record, accordion to the old law of the land."
	In the reign of King Edward the Third, "in a time of great public
danger," certain "commissioners of enquiry" were appointed, who conducted
their business in secret. This led to a special act of Parliament,
forbidding any such "secret enquiries" to be made, and ordering, by statute,
that all such commissions for enquiry should be issued to the judges on the
bench, and that all enquiries should be made "in open courts, and not in any
close or secret place; and that all enquiries should be by juries, and by no
digression or examination" The English judges in the time of Henry VIII.
gave verdicts against all such commissions, and pronounced it "directly
against the law to take any man's body without indictment." It was held that
no man's liberty was secure, if the crown could  appoint commissioners to
stand in the place of juries and the courts of law. It would have cost any
king of England at any time for the last century and a half not only his
crown but his head, if he had attempted the deed which Mr. Lincoln has done
in this land of boasted liberty. His own Congressmen have admitted that he
has been guilty of violating the Constitution and laws of the country, by
passing an act to protect him and his gents in guilt from arrest and
imprisonment. By this indemnifying act they confess his crime -confess that
he is liable to be arraigned before the courts of justice, to be tried and
convicted. That proof they have foolishly set forth to the world in the
damning shape of a confession. It brands the President as a self-convicted
felon. We say foolishly, because their act is no law, and does not afford
the guilty President the least relief.  Constitution says "No ex post facto
law shall be passed;" i.e. law made after the act is done. Congress has no
power to pas a law to stay the punishment of crime already accomplished.
Such an act is a violation of the Constitution, and is, therefore, of no
binding effect whatever upon the courts. Any judge who should respect such
an act, would render himself liable to impeachment and removal. Nor is this
delirious Congress any better off with its other
equally unconstitutional act-suspending the writ of habeas corpus in States
not in rebellion against the laws of the land. Congress has no power to pass
such an act. Article 1, section 9, of the Constitution declares that "the
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless, when
in cases [18]of rebellion or invasion, the public safety require it." But
there is no rebellion nor Invasion in the State of New Jersey, nor in any of
the Northern States, and Congress has, therefore, no power to suspend the
writ of liberty in those States-no more power than 'it has to pass an act
ordering citizens to be
hanged without trial and without proof of guilt This act suspending the writ
of habeas corpus in non-rebellious States, not only violates the ninth
section of the that article of the Constitution, but it necessarily leads to
the violation of a portion of the second section of the third article, which
declares that "the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment,
shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said
crimes shall have been committed. This suspension act of Congress also
virtually violates articles 1, 2. 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10 of the amendments to the
Constitution.
	Article 1 prohibits Congress from passing any act that abridges the
freedom of speech, or the press.
	Article 2 prevents Congress from passing any law to prohibit the
people from keeping arms for self defence. 
	Article 4 forbids Congress to pass any law to render citizens
insecure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, or to subject them to
any arrest not supported by oath or affirmation.
	Article 5 forbids Congress to pass any law whereby a citizen, who is
not a soldier in the land or naval service, shall be held to answer for any
crime unless on a presentment or an indictment of a grand jury, or to
deprive any man of his liberty without due process of law.
Article 6 forbids Congress to pass any act to prevent an accused man from
having a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, or to try a man
without informing him of the nature of the accusation against him, or
confronting him with his accusers.
	Article 8 guarantees every citizen against unusual and cruel
punishments.
	Article 10 forbids Congress to exercise any powers not delegated to
it by the States.
	Now the act suspending the writ of liberty in States where there is
no rebellion nor invasion, really amounts to a violation of all these
articles. Indeed, it violates not less than nine articles and sections of
the Constitution! It is, therefore, no law, and will be so
pronounced by the courts. People who submit to such a violation of their
Constitution, such an invasion of their chartered rights, deserve to be
slaves. Since the reign of tyranny began, a thousand kings have lost their
heads for infinitely less crimes against the lawful rights of the people, If
the colporteurs, mesmeric doctors, and abolition lecturers of Congress do
not know that they have no power to suspend the courts, where there is no
"rebellion nor invasion," then it is time the courts and the people gave
these furious imbeciles a lesson or two in constitutional law. Shall their
masters, the sovereign people, for a single moment cower beneath the
scowling impotence of a mob of refuse humanity, which never yet knew the
restraints and the manners of the society of gentlemen? Shall the sovereign
people of this land look on passively, and see their Constitution trampled
under foot by a herd of negro-worshipping savages? If the world has been
wondering for two 'thousand years that the once noble people of Rome were
not sooner stung to univer-[19]sal fury under the rule of the fiddling,
singing, profligate, mimist, Nero what must we expect the verdict of our
children to be of us, when they shall read how we looked on and saw the
temple of  constitutional liberty hacked and haggled down by a gang of
blundering liars and imposters? Let us either learn to forgot whose sons we
are, or teach those whom we have appointed to administer our laws to respect
our chartered rights .- There is rebellion in South Carolina!-Is that any
reason why we here, where there is no rebellion, should be dispossessed of
every safeguard of our liberty? We have given our treasure, almost to the
last dollar!-must we too be treated like rebels and felons? Denied all the
rights made over to us in our constitution and laws? Arrested for no crime!
Incarcerated without charge and without remedy? Tried not by juries but by
commissioners! Put into prison and let out again by telegraph! By hired
spies! By drunken, libertine provost-marshals! By policemen! By pimps
without warrant! By informers! By convicts from penitentiaries! And -O my
God! by abolition lecturers! Is there a "lower deep" yet? Then "death and
hell hath given up their dead!"

THE U. S. TREASURY ROBBED TO BUY NEGROES.

	THE Lower House of Congress has passed a bill to appropriate ten
million
Dollars ($10,000,000) of the people's money to buy the negroes in Missouri.
If the people of Missouri are fools enough to take Mr. Lincoln's or
Congress' promise to pay for that amount, so be it; but it will never be
paid.- Congress has no power to appropriate the people's money for such a
object- no more right to empty the treasury of the United States to buy
negroes in Missouri, than it has to buy negroes in Guinea-or, than it has to
pass a Law authorizing Mr. Lincoln to send out his provost marshals to rob
the pockets, and steal the shirts from the backs, of every man they can
overtake.
	The administration has been for some time spending more than one
hundred
thousand dollars a day, to support negroes whom they have stolen, or induced
to run away from their masters. And all this outlay for negroes has been
going on while our soldiers have remained unpaid, and their wives and
children are suffering with want-almost with starvation Within the last
thirty days, over a hundred thousand white men- North and South- have been
slain to appease the terrible Moloch of abolitionism. The whole of this
bloody crime may now be summed up in the horrid word-abolitionism. Ilias
malorum. It is the death-warrant of the nation.

"Born to afflect Afric's family,
And sow dissension in the hearts of brothers."

Born to impoverish and destroy white men, to bestow an imaginary and
unattainable good upon black men. Will the people pay the unlawful debt? For
one, I am resolved not to go into this negro-buying business if I can help
it.[30]	

If the people of Missouri wish to get rid of their negroes, they are welcome
-provided they do not throw them upon us for support. If they do not wish to
get rid of them, they are welcome to keep them, Only the people of these
Northern States are determined that they will not be taxed to buy them. Let
those who will invest in that kind of fund; only let them understand that
they have Mr. Lincoln and his crazy Congress for paymasters. I, Abraham
Lincoln & Go., promise to pay ten millions of dollars for the aforesaid
negroes
of Missouri. If any body is content with such a note of hand they can take
it; but let them not imagine that the nation will ever endorse its If
capitalists are content to advance money on such paper, it is their own
speculation; let them not accuse the nation of dishonesty in repudiating the
illegal demand.


THE PROPHECY OF CALHOUN.

	In 1837, when abolition petitions were first presented to Congress,
John
C. Calhoun uttered the following prophetic language concerning them:

	"As widely as this incendiary spirit has spread, it has not yet
infected this
body, or the great mass of the intelligent and business portion of the
North; but unless it he speedily stopped, it will spread and work upward
till it brings the two great sections of the Union into deadly conflict.
	"A large portion of the Northern States believed slavery to be a
sin, and would believe it an obligation to abolish it, if they should feel
themselves in any degree responsible for its continuance, and that his
(Webster's) doctrine would necessarily lead to the belief of such
responsibility. I then predicted that it would commence, as it has, with
this fanatical portion of society; and that they would begin their
operations on the ignorant, the weak, the young, the thoughtless, and would
gradually extend upward till they become strong enough to obtain political
control, when he, and others holding the highest stations in society, would,
however reluctant, be compelled to yield to their doctrine, or be driven
into obscurity.
	"Those who imagine that the spirit now abroad in the North will die
away of itself without a shock of convulsion, have formed a very inadequate
conception of its real character; it will continue to rise and spread,
unless prompt and efficient measures to stay its progress be adopted.
Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the school, and, to a
considerable extent, of the press-these great instruments by which the mind
of the rising generation will be formed.
	"However sound the great body of the non-slaveholding section are at
present, in the course of a few years they will be succeeded by those who
have been taught to hate the people and institutions of nearly one-half of
this Union, with a hatred more deadly than one hostile nation ever
entertained toward another. It is easy to see the end. By the necessary
course of events, if left to themselves, we must become [21] finally two
people. It is impossible, under the deadly hatred which must spring up
between the two great sections if the present causes are permitted to
operate unchecked, that we should continue under the same political system.
The conflicting elements would burst the Union asunder, as powerful as are
the links which hold it together. Abolition and the Union cannot coexist. As
a friend of the Union I openly proclaim it, and the sooner it is known the
better."
	Alas! how are these warning words fulfilled! Not only was Webster
worse than driven into obscurity by abolitionism-he was cruelly mocked an
maligned, even after he was dead, by its fiendish team. And it has worked
the destruction precisely as foreseen by the great statesman of the South.
It was true then that "abolitionism and the Union cannot coexist." It is
true now. It will be true forever. It is also true that there is no hope of
reconstructing the Union until abolitionism is dead and buried. Those who
really wish to save or reconstruct the Union, can only make a beginning by
destroying the bloody fiend abolitionism. If that lives, the nation must
die.

ACROSTIC.

GRANT that thy wisdom's mantle yet may fall
      Encircling some brave soul with saving might;
Or that, in answer to a nation's call,
     Reason may dawn and yet disperse the night.
Grant that thy sacred heritage yet may be
     Eternal-Union, Peace and Liberty.

Would thou were't here-Sage, Hero of thy time,
    Among dissensions, and 'midst treasons rife.
Secession standing in the ranks of Crime,
   Her nervous sons all maddened in the strife.
In her dark train Disunion comes-
   North against South in fierce array.
Grant from our altars and our homes
  This treacherous storm may pass away.
Oh, save thy country, if thy spirit can,
  Nor leave its memory to the sneers of man.

The [New York] Old Guard: A Monthly Journal; Devoted To The Principles Of
1776 And 1787. 1:1, (January 1863), 29-

Take care,

Bob

Judy and Bob Huddleston
10643 Sperry Street
Northglenn, CO  80234-3612
303.451.6376  Huddleston.r at comcast.net

I am A thousand times meaner A hundred times Harder and A damed sight wors
Looking than I Ever was so you can form some sort of an idea what sort of A
Looking man you have now for A Husband if this kind of Buisness wont make
men hard I should like to know what will it is Everyone for himself and dam
the one that pulls the hind tit

Henry Clemons of Company K, 23rd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, to his wife
Anna in Sauk City, Wis, January 15, 1863